Wine glut
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The wine lake refers to a perceived overproduction of wine in the European Union, particularly around 2005–2007. The EU's Common Agricultural Policy contained a number of subsidies for wine producers, leading to a supply glut; this surplus forced an overhaul of EU farm policies. In 2007 it was reported that for the previous several vintages, European countries had been producing 1.7 billion more bottles of wine than they sold. Hundreds of millions of bottles of wine had been turned into
industrial alcohol Ethanol (abbr. EtOH; also called ethyl alcohol, grain alcohol, drinking alcohol, or simply alcohol) is an organic compound. It is an alcohol with the chemical formula . Its formula can be also written as or (an ethyl group linked to a ...
every year, a practice that had sometimes been described as "emergency distillation", at a cost to taxpayers of €500 million per year. A major contributor was reported to be
Languedoc-Roussillon wine Languedoc-Roussillon wine, including the ''vin de pays'' labeled ''Vin de Pays d'Oc'', is produced in southern France. While "Languedoc" can refer to a specific historic region of France and Northern Catalonia, usage since the 20th century (espe ...
production, which used one third of the grapes grown in France. One proposed remedy was Plan Bordeaux: an initiative introduced in 2005 by the French vintners association ONIVINS designed to reduce France's production and raise prices. Part of the plan was to uproot of the of
vineyards A vineyard (; also ) is a plantation of grape-bearing vines, grown mainly for winemaking, but also raisins, table grapes and non-alcoholic grape juice. The science, practice and study of vineyard production is known as viticulture. Vineyards ...
in Bordeaux. The proposed plan was met with some resistance. In 2020, wine growers warned that the EU risked another massive surplus due to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly the restaurant closures. The growers called for additional subsidies to distill surplus wine.


See also

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Butter mountain The butter mountain is a supply surplus of butter produced in the European Union because of government interventionism that began in the 1970s. The size of the surplus changed significantly over time and mostly disappeared by 2017, which has le ...
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Crop destruction Crop destruction is the deliberate destruction of crops or agricultural products to render it useless for consumption or processing. It can be made by burning, grinding, dumping into water, or application of chemicals. It should not be confused w ...


References


Further reading

* {{Wine-stub Economy of the European Union European Union and agriculture Wine terminology Alcohol in Europe